HOW ROBERT FRIPP MADE A MUSICIAN OUT OF ME
“All my life, I have loved music, and never in my life have I been the tiniest bit musical. Not only can I not sing in tune, I cause others to fall off key. Not only can I not dance, my dancing has often caused injury to others, most memorably on a St. Patrick’s Day …
ASKED AND ANSWERED
The journalist Deborah Kalb was kind enough to asak me about writing, Commander Will Cushing, books, and other subjects. You can read the results right here. Thanks, Deborah!
HEY SAILOR!
Commander Will Cushing, hanging around the Village Bookstore in Pleasantville NY, making eyes at Lena Dunham.
LUST OBJECT
In its current auction, Ray Haradin Toys of Yesteryear, a Pittsburgh outfit, is offering a 60-piece toy set depicting the Sack of Troy. The set was made by Heyde, the German toy maker that was based in Dresden. Founded in 1872, Heyde was destroyed during the firebombing of 1945. I don’t know when this set …
WE’RE OFF!
Thanks very much to Civil War Forum of Metropolitan New York for inviting me to speak on Monday night about my man Commander Will Cushing, and getting the book launched off to a great start. We met at Draughts restaurant on 55th street at Second Avenue. It was great to see friends like Paul Windells …
COMEDY VERITE
Last week I had the pleasure of going to the theater with one half of my Loose Lips co-writers, the gemultlict Lisa Birnbach. What fun! We had dinner on Bond Street in a brick-walled basement level restaurant called The Smile, which had the atmosphere and trappings of the kind of archetypal Greenwich Village that Edna …
THE SECRET IS OUT
“A workshop of a new musical about late talk-show host Johnny Carson, simply titled Carson — The Musical, will be held in Manhattan in December. Rehearsals, according to an Equity casting notice, will begin Nov. 3; presentations are scheduled for Dec. 9-12. Carson has a book by Jamie Malanowski and Henry Bushkin with music by …
AMERICA THE INEBRIATED
If you were an editor, and you wanted to have someone review two books about drinking in America, you would look for one of the more abstemious writers in captivity, right? Well, whether they knew it or not, that’s what the editors of The American Interest got when they asked me to review America Walks …